• Lester Lee, Srujana Venkata Vedicherla, Daniel Loh, Seyed Ehsan Saffari, Justin Ker, Krishan Kumar, Beatrice Jun-Nian Tan, Shree Kumar Dinesh, Ji Min Ling, and Colum Nolan.
• Department of Neurosurgery, National Neuroscience Institute, Singapore; Department of Neurosurgery, Singapore General Hospital, Singapore; Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore. Electronic address: lester_ch_lee@nni.com.sg.
• World Neurosurg. 2023 Jan 1; 169: e181e189e181-e189.

BackgroundHigh cervical intradural extramedullary tumors are uncommon. Their relationship to surrounding neural structures and vertebral arteries makes surgical excision challenging. No previous studies have compared high cervical to subaxial cervical intradural extramedullary spinal tumors to elucidate their unique characteristics and surgical outcomes.MethodsWe performed a retrospective study in which patients who underwent excision of a cervical intradural extramedullary tumor were divided into a high cervical group and a subaxial cervical group. Variables included sex, age, Charlson Comorbidity Index, volume, laterality, preoperative weakness, use of neuromonitoring and drains, instrumented fusion, complications, length of stay, histology, discharge location, recurrence, and duration of follow-up. Variables were compared between the 2 groups. Limb power and Nurick classification were charted preoperatively, at discharge, and at 6 months to plot their recovery trajectory.ResultsEighty-four patients with a total of 90 tumors were enrolled, including 40 patients in the high cervical group and 44 patients in the subaxial spine group. More patients with neurofibromas (P = 0.011) and bilateral tumors (P = 0.044) were in the high cervical group. A greater prevalence of neurofibromatosis type 1 was significant for bilateral high cervical tumors (P = 0.033). More patients in the subaxial group had instrumented fusion (P = 0.045). More patients in the high cervical group had improvement in limb power (P = 0.025) and Nurick classification (P = 0.0001) postoperatively before discharge. By 6 months, both groups had similar recovery. No mortality was attributable to surgery in either group.ConclusionHigh cervical intradural extramedullary spine tumors have more bilateral tumors associated with neurofibromatosis type 1. Despite the challenging anatomy, surgical resection is safe with good outcomes in this group.Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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